| The concept for its development will be adopted in January The preparation of the “Concept for the development of the information technology industry in the Russian Federation” is close to completion. Its adoption is expected in January 2005. The current, already third, edition was generally approved on November 18 at a government meeting and caused restrained enthusiasm among industry representatives. The document (the text and the opportunity to discuss it are available on the website www.apkit.ru) assumes the adoption of new federal laws. In particular, the Law “On the Right to Information”.
The IT industry is defined as “a part of the economy in which added value is generated as a result of the development, supply, maintenance and operation of information technologies (excluding telecommunications and information resources).” In other words, we are talking about the computer and programming industry, without the communications industry. The very industry to which optimists assign the role of savior of the national economy from the “raw materials curse.”
The current growth rate of our IT market is at least 25% annually (in the world - 10% over the past five years). Moreover, some sectors and leading companies are growing even faster, achieving 50% and even 100% per year, despite the fact that neither the state nor the stock market invested practically anything in this (however, the state, rapidly computerizing its apparatus, strongly stimulated computer sales and software, but it would be wrong to consider this a measure of targeted support for the industry). Even oil prices do not demonstrate such high dynamics.
However, this idyll, the authors of the document write, is, firstly, due to the “low starting level” of the IT industry. Secondly, it will not be possible to maintain the current growth rates until 2010 without special efforts by the state. And if this does not work out, then there will be no IT contribution to doubling GDP. The latter conclusion is fully justified by the understandable desire of the IT business (the text of the concept was prepared by APKIT - the Association of Computer and Information Technology Enterprises under the leadership of the president of the DPI group of companies, Evgeniy Butman) to use the favorable political situation in order to receive preferences from the state. This also seems to explain the politically correct mention in the document of the federal target program “Electronic Russia”, which representatives of the IT industry in private conversations tend to criticize rather than praise.
But it’s not only and not so much about preferences. With them, by the way, everything is not so simple: for example, the managers and owners of leading Russian software companies object to the introduction of tax benefits for their industry (motive: after the announcement of benefits, criminal capital will pour into the IT market, which is famous for its purity of morals). The point is that there are serious macroeconomic problems in IT development, and specifically that the growth in sales of computers and programs in Russia, both in the state, corporate, and home sectors of the market, clearly depends on the volume of our oil exports (which was just a year ago drew attention, in particular, to the president of the Verysell group of companies, Mikhail Krasnov). If we do not get rid of this dependence (and this can be done in the only way - through the entry of the domestic IT industry into foreign markets), plans for a serious change in the structure of the country's economic growth can be given up.
Market participants, however, are not going to give this up. On the contrary, it looks like they are going to carry their cross further. Here is what Olga Uskova, president of the software company Cognitive Technologies, says: “The adoption of the concept of information technology development is in many ways a historical event. This is a kind of logical bridge from Soviet times, when the industry had everything, and the period of early democracy that followed it, when the industry did not have nothing, by now, when the industry begins to receive in economically feasible proportions what it needs for normal development. The concept is a necessary step for the formation of a reasonable program for the development of the IT industry in Russia. It creates the prerequisites for starting an objective process of equalizing the level of information development between. Russia and the West. The government considers the development of the IT industry as a priority. This process will be provided with the highest political support, which allows us to count on the implementation of the tasks laid down in the concept within the specified time frame."
The tasks in question are as follows. The industry should grow to $30 billion a year by 2010. Employment in it will be at least 5% of the working population (3.5 million people) versus 1.4% in 2001. Russia will become one of the top three leaders in the global offshore programming market with an export volume of $3 billion, and “a number of leading international” IT companies will carry out at least 20% of their research in Russia.
Let us note, however, that by the same time India is going to increase the export of software alone to the level of $50 billion.
In conclusion, two more points. The first is that the Ministry of Information Technologies and Communications of the Russian Federation, until recently, both in name and in essence, was the Ministry of Communications. The IT sphere is a new area of activity for Leonid Reiman’s department. The concept for the development of the IT industry provides, in essence, that the IT sector will at least repeat the same successes that the domestic communications industry has achieved over the past three to five years. The situation in the IT industry today is indeed similar to that which took place in the communications industry by 2000, when it seemed that we were hopelessly behind developed countries. Today the IT market has reached $7.5 billion (1.4% of GDP), and this also looks like a hopeless lag. For comparison: in the USA, the IT market exceeds $500 billion and accounts for more than 5% of GDP.
Second. How successful the IT industry will be depends not only, and not even so much, on whether the president and the government will pay any special attention to it. The IT industry does not exist on its own; it is closely connected with all other industries without exception. According to IT market participants, today in Russia the dependence of business on bureaucracy is becoming stronger. There are other problems, primarily related to currency regulation and the export of high-tech products, the solution of which concerns the country’s economy as a whole, and not one particular ministry. Anna MAYOROVA |
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